One of the more exciting events of FTOPS XX is in the books! The two-day $10,000 buy-in Heads-Up Championship started with 21 players late Saturday afternoon, but by Sunday evening there were just two players standing. The tournament was noticeably smaller than heads-up events in the past. This is obviously due to American players being banned from FullTilt along with other high-stakes players opting out for various reasons.  A lot of Americans would have surely played including Tom Dwan, Andrew Lichtenberger, Phil Ivey, Daniel Cates, Brian Hastings, and many more.  Unfortunately the railbirds were left with some good but relatively unknown players to watch.

Each individual match started with 6,000 chips and 10/20 blinds creating some nice deep-stack play.  With 12 minute levels and the blinds hardly moving up the first hour of each match was played at least 100 Big Blinds deep.  Even with the deeper stacks there was still plenty of action early on leading to a few notable players busting.  Sorel “Imper1um” Mizzi and Caio Pimenta were two of the first handful of players to bust, losing their $10,300 buy-in in the process.   Mizzi has seen great success both online and live where he has won more than $3,000,000 in live play including a $659,917 score for finishing 3rd in the Aussie Millions Main Event last year.  Online, where he is known to the world as “imper1um”, Mizzi has taken down the Sunday Warm-Up on PokerStars twice as well as the Wednesday Quarter Million, $100 re-buy, FTOPS Event #8 in 2007, and the $215 re-buy.  He is widely considered one of the best online tournament players of all time and has more than $2,200,000 in cashes to his name. Pimenta is a FullTilt professional hailing from Brazil.  He plays a large amount of online tournaments on FullTilt where he nearly won FTOPS XIX Event #22 last year before falling in 3rd place for $100,000. His biggest victory came in the Sunday Mulligan, a weekly $215 major event on FTP, which saw Caio take home $54,604 for outlasting a 1,241 player field.

Other players of note falling short of the money included “XWINK”, a likable high-stakes heads-up player who ran up small deposit on Ultimate Bet last year into millions of dollars. Since then he has been playing high-stakes on FullTilt with at times a large percentage of his bankroll on the line.  He typically can be seen playing anywhere from $50/$100 to $500/$1000 heads-up PLO which might have left his NL game a bit rusty as he busted outside of the money in 11th place in Event #20.   The tournament continued to roll on until “FLIPokeHer” busted in 5th place leaving just four players to return Sunday for a shot at the title.

The tournament resumed early Sunday afternoon with four players: Peter “Apathy” Jetten, “BlondieCutie”, “DjAdi”, and “Schoitl”.  The first semi-final was a quick one.  Peter Jetten and Schoitl matched up with Jetten quickly taking the advantage.  Known as “Apathy” to the online poker world, Jetten is a FullTilt Team Member who nearly won the $10k PLO World Championship at the 2008 WSOP, losing a heads-up battle with Marty Smyth for the title.  His heads-up luck was much better in the semi-finals as he assumed a near 9:1 chiplead early in the match before losing a few flips.  Still, with a 6:1 chip-lead he was still way out ahead and took down the match when his river shove with a straight was called by Schoitl.

The second semifinal match was taking much longer between German “DjAdi” and “BlondieCutie”. DjAdi is a high-stakes player who has dabbled in online tournaments in the past but has never had much success. In cash games DjAdi has beaten some of the best players in the world including Tom “Durrrr” Dwan, Scott “mastrblastr” Seiver, and even Phil Ivey. All of his heads-up experience failed to pay off in the semifinals against BlondieCutie who took down the title when his Pocket Sevens held up against Pocket Sixes all-in before the flop. The big pot went his way and left DjAdi out in the cold in 3rd place worth just $31,500.

With the final match set the railbirds dug in for what was expected to be a long match. However, much like his semifinal match Jetten took little time in dispatching his opponent on the way to his first FTOPS win and a $94,500 payday. Jetten seemed quite pleased with his efforts quickly tweeting afterward “YAyyyyyyyy FTOPS Victory! Should I go with the Goldjersey body once my avatar is ready?” For those unfamiliar with FTOPS events the winner is awarded a Gold Jersey Avatar on FullTilt for the rest of their career. It is actually quite a small group of players, less than 500 currently, who have been able to win an FTOPS championship. Jetten ended the event by getting all of the chips in the middle with Ace-King which easily dominated his opponent’s Ace-Queen.

Congratulations goes to Jetten, BlondieCutie, DjAdi, and Schoitl for cashing in FTOPS XX Event #19! Be sure to stay tuned to the FlopTurnRiver News Section for more in depth write-ups on both FTOPS XX and the upcoming PokerStars Spring Championship of Online Poker starting in May.

FullTilt FTOPS XX Event #20 $150k Guaranteed
21 Entrants; $210,000 prize pool

1. Peter Jetten $94,500
2. BlondieCutie $52,500
3. DjAdi $31,500
4. Schoitl $31,500